More truth than we asked for

I’ve used my Telegraph column today to look at truth and politicians. When Peter Mandelson said yesterday “I know the truth” about Gordon Brown, it was a phrase loaded with meaning. Candidates in the northwest report a significant ripple effect on the doorstep from bigotgate, namely that lots of women just like Mrs Duffy share the same concerns about immigration and feel that they too have been labelled bigots by Gordon Brown. Here’s an extract from my column, and you can read the whole thing here:

“This election has been marked by the voters' hunger for honesty, both personal and political. History will doubtless show that our appetite has been sharpened by years of broken promises and empty words; the scandal of MPs' expenses left us ravenous.

“This is why the general election campaign stopped yesterday to watch Mr Brown's walk of shame to Gillian Duffy's front door, and waited for what seemed like ages for him to come out from behind the net curtains. Even the Special Branch minders guarding him looked embarrassed by the black comedy they found themselves a part of. "I'm a penitent sinner," said Mr Brown on emerging, his face stiff with a smile of realisation that the wages of sin are political death.

“Some in the commentariat have tried to laugh off Mr Brown's moment of verbal madness as evidence that he is human. The voters, they suggest, would feel sympathy for a politician caught unawares, then humiliated over and over again on live television. However, the Prime Minister is a more sophisticated political animal. He must know that if authenticity is all the rage, this was the wrong kind. He held his head when he was made to listen to the tape because he could hear the sound of Labour voters turning theirs away in shame.”